Ile-de-la-Tortue - Haiti Observer Blog

To speak of Tortuga in Haiti, is to conjure up the swashbuckling remnants of the piratical past of the Caribbean, as its representation in literature and the modern entertainment media casts it, almost always, in that quixotically classic light. But Tortuga is more than just pirate stories, more than just a little island off the north coast of Haiti.

Named by Columbus, who, upon happening on the isle in 1492, forming out of the mist of the morning, likened its shape to that of a turtle, it was initially settled by colonists from Spain, but, first made a colony of Santo Domingo by the French. More people would eventually come, as, in the first quarter of the 1600's, additional French settlers, along with some English ones, would travel there. These new residents would, however, face an attack four years later by Don Fadrique de Toledo, who would see to their expulsion before fortifying the island.

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